You did it. You took the plunge. You followed the lead of 92% of marketers1 and started a blog for your behavioral health center to educate your current and prospective patients about the benefits of psilocybin therapy and other psychedelic treatments.
That’s great! Now what? You need to know how to write psilocybin articles that connect with patients.
Usually, new bloggers fall into one of two groups. First, there’s the group that incorrectly assumes article writing is easy. They’re just words, right? You talk all day, so how different is typing them out?
More different than you might think. Writing an article isn’t as easy as purging all your thoughts on any given topic onto your computer. The process is actually much more involved than that.
And if you aren’t living in Camp Confidence, then you’re likely quietly regretting your choice, questioning all your life decisions up until the point of creating this blog. Fortunately, you’re not alone. Nearly 40% of professional bloggers say they struggle2 to consistently produce quality content.
Writing can be challenging. But it doesn’t have to be scary. In fact, creating content can be fulfilling and rewarding if you know what you’re doing.
And that’s the key—knowing what you’re doing. So, if you’re new to article writing, now’s the perfect time to familiarize yourself with this medium and learn how to create content the right way.
How to Write Incredible Introductions
So let’s break this down. If you’re intending to provide soon-to-be-legal psilocybin treatments, the primary goal of your content strategy should be articles that land a high rank on the search engine results page of keywords related to those treatments. And you’ll get to the top of the SERP by using SEO tactics in the introduction of your blogs.
Every article you write has to start with an introduction. People read article introductions expecting to learn what the article is about, get excited about the topic, and set their expectations for what they’ll read. Many readers will navigate away if your introduction doesn’t deliver on those primary functions.
And Google is smart enough to understand this, too. Regardless of how many keywords you weave into your articles, if your introductions aren’t engaging and helpful, your rank will suffer.
So start by planning out your introduction to make sure you cover all the basics. Present a problem to the reader that the content in your article will solve. Include anecdotes or turns of phrase to make your introduction engaging and fun to read. If your website style settings allow, changing up the font can make your introduction stand out even more.
Of course, keywords are still important—just don’t force them into text where they stand out to the reader as alien. Google’s algorithm is expertly attuned to this practice, known as keyword stuffing. Including one or two mentions of your keyword phrase every couple of hundred words is sufficient.
Research shows the average amount of time spent reading a blog post is 37 seconds,3 which amounts to about 225 words for the everyday reader. Keep this in mind when you’re writing introductions for your articles.
How to Write Perfect Paragraphs
After your introduction comes the body paragraphs of your article, otherwise known as the “meat” of the piece. As necessary as it is for your introduction to grab readers’ attention, it’s equally important that your body paragraphs keep it.
Just like your introduction, Google understands and perceives your content just as human beings do. So the better the quality of your content, the higher your piece will rank. In fact, professional bloggers cite quality content as the most important success factor for blog articles.4
When writing your articles, list the points you wish to make to determine the core message of each paragraph. Then, start each one with the most important, core message and follow with sentences supporting that message.
Stick to the one topic, one paragraph rule. Avoid jumping around to different topics within a single paragraph. Instead, flesh out the supporting statements for your core message in 10 sentences or less.
Most readers want to spend about seven minutes reading blog posts.5 This amounts to about 1,600 words, give or take. And even though 10 sentences is the ceiling, the shorter the better.
Once you’ve established your paragraphs, organize the body with subheadings to help readers (and Google) navigate your articles with ease. Including keywords in the subheadings will improve your SEO as well.
Ready to write your first article on psilocybin treatments? Dreamscape Marketing can help. Call us at 888.307.7304 to schedule your strategy session.
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